FEMA officials in Atlanta on Monday morning directed emergency response teams to take positions just beyond the reach of Hurricane Gustav as it made landfall south of Houma, La.

“We’re making sure we have all our response teams, equipment and commodities in theater,” said Ginger Edwards, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Regional Response Coordination Center in DeKalb County. Federal officials are standing by with water, ready-to-eat meals, power generators and emergency vehicles.

The teams include hundreds of responders such as firefighters trained in urban search and rescue operations, chainsaw operators from the U.S. Forestry Service and medical personnel from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Edwards, talking early Monday morning in the middle of a cluster of coordinators from various federal agencies, including the U.S. Army and the Federal Highway Administration, said the responders are “prepared to stay for a long time.”

The federal response center, activated to a Level 1 response on Friday for the first time in two years, is housed in a nondescript office park on Chamblee-Tucker Road in DeKalb County. It coordinates agencies in eight states — Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and South and North Carolina.

Another FEMA center, located in Denton, Texas, is coordinating the response to Louisiana and points west. President George Bush was expected to visit that center Monday.

Lora Goza, also with FEMA, said officials expect the Mississippi coastal area to take the brunt of the storm. That’s where many of the responders have been positioned.

“We’re trying to keep them out of harm’s way, while inching them up as close as possible,” Goza said.

The only non-governmental groups represented at the response center are the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster.

On Sunday night, 44,588 evacuees spent the night in more than 300 shelters in ten states, said Kurt Weirich, the Red Cross liasion to FEMA. In Georgia, 271 people stayed in four shelters.

“We’ll open shelters as the need is there,” Weirich said.

The Red Cross has also deployed more than 3,000 volunteers and readied 115,500 cots, 226,000 blankets, 700,000 meals and 119,000 toiletry kits, he said.

“As people are allowed re-entry into areas, we’ll be in the communities providing water and food.”

Brandon Bolinski, FEMA’s hurricane program manager and a meterologist tracking the storm, briefed coordinators at 7 a.m. Monday.

He’s also keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Hanna, which is near the Bahamas and on track to strike Savannah by the weekend. But even a slight change in its trajectory could send it any where from Miami to Wilmington, N.C., he said.

Behind Hanna, two more storms may be forming, Bolinski said.

“Usually we don’t see storms so close together,” he told more than 100 coordinators. “The next storm on the list is Ike, so take a deep breath.”